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Designing a Page That Compliments Your Content Pt.6 (Objects)
Objects
Objects are small pieces of code that will be added to your site to make it unique and to provide useful content for your readers outside of your own writing. They can be as simple as a page counter or as complicated as an online poll or a RSS feed, but all will be laid out on your page with two ideas in mind: visual harmony and usefulness.
Your page, when viewed for the first time, should speak most loudly to your theme. Whether your theme is artistic or political or technological, every object on the page should do its best to illustrate and reinforce that theme in the mind of the reader.
Some objects, however, will not relate directly to your theme as much as they will to the operation of your site. A traffic counter is a perfect example. While bloggers are excited when their traffic grows and want to tell the world about it in capital letters and bold fonts, most readers are not terribly interested. Therefore it’s good practice to feature objects that directly relate to your theme and content close to the top of your page where the reader will see it first. Operational or structural objects, like a list of blogs that have sent you recent traffic, belong closer to the bottom of the page.
Remember, your objective is to catch the first time reader’s attention and to illustrate, in as little time as possible, the theme of your site. Every object on your page should be placed with that in mind.
Kenneth R Sword Jr
Next topic:Designing a Page That Compliments Your Content Pt.7 (Your Blog Entries)
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